Black Widow: Red Ledger
by 1000001nights
Summary: Following the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Black Widow: Red Ledger picks up as Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson hunt for the missing Bucky Barnes. During this hunt, Nat takes the time to tell Steve her history, of her time in the infamous Red Room, and her transformation into the deadly Black Widow. But is Nat's past as far behind her as she thinks?
1. Chapter 1: The Motherland

Chapter 1

Natasha Romanoff was sitting in a Starbucks, just off Beacon Hill near the centre of Boston. She hadn't had time to reflect on what had brought her to a franchise coffee shop of all places, being the kind of person she was. Natasha had been many things in her life. SHIELD agent. Assassin. Spy. Avenger, most recently and most important of all. None of those things waited in coffee chains, ordering tea for one. The strangeness of it had yet to fully dawn on her, and part of her hoped that it wouldn't, not completely. She didn't need another worry, another thing to overanalyze. For the time being, she was waiting, and that was enough to occupy her mind.

Outside, the afternoon was crisp and cool with the coming fall, and beyond the window to her right, Nat could see the grey-green leaves slowly turning from yellow to orange to red. In front of her, a paper cup of tea was resting on the table. She had not yet taken a sip of it. She was waiting. She'd been waiting for what felt like a long time, and the tea was probably cold. But she tried not to think about it. Anxiously, she scanned the room one more time.

Out of habit, Natasha had chosen a seat where she could press her back into a corner, making sure she had the clearest view of the only door, and good sightlines through both sets of windows, which ran the length of the walls on either side of her. From where she sat - back straight, body tense - she knew exactly where to go to find cover, how to retaliate, exactly who could be a threat, which civilians she could save, which were expendable, which would provide an adequate distraction if she needed to get away when something happened... _if_ something happened, she reminded herself. This was Boston. She was an _Avenger_. She was safe.

Nervously, she drummed her nails on the table. _Red_ , a voice echoed in her head. It sounded like her own. Her nail polish was red. That was all. She shifted the cup of tea, almost picked it up, then thought otherwise; it was, she felt, no longer warm. She'd been waiting a long time. _Have I?_ asked a voice in her head; she checked her watch. _No_ , she thought, _tea just gets cold fast_. Steve was only a few minutes late.

It was Natasha who had asked Steve to meet alone. They'd spent so much time together, it felt strange to say alone. But Sam was always somewhere nearby, and Fury was always whispering in their ear from some far-off part of the world. She needed a break from it all. Steve needed a break, probably more than anyone. A piece of his past had not only resurfaced, it was alive... If Nat had known... She put the thought from her head. There was another reason she had asked for the meeting. She wanted to - _needed_ to - get something off her mind. This was her chance, to explain, to make sure he understood, but she was still not sure how to go about doing that, and it was not helping that he was late. She shifted her tea again, and set herself back to looking over the other patrons. Laptops. Couples. Half-finished scones. _No danger_ , Nat reminded herself. She breathed, and tried not to think about her watch.

Steve arrived a few minutes later, scanning the shop with that half-stunned look he often wore, as if everything around him was still an unfathomable surprise. She waved him over when he spotted her, her bright red hair flaming in the sunlight. He looked like a tourist. Captain America looked like a tourist. Nat smiled. The blue jacket, the khakis, the shoulder bag he insisted on carrying, the Red Sox hat, all combined to create that image of a quintessential out-of-towner. None of it compared to the lost look on his face, however. That's what really gave him away, a man out of his element, out of space, out of time. _He_ is _lost_ , Natasha thought. _I can sympathize_. He sat opposite her, and nodded respectfully. Nat smiled.

"It must kill you to wear that hat," she said. "At least you know they suck now, right?"

"Is it too much?" Steve asked. "I thought, you know, blend in. I was never much of a baseball fan." Natasha faked a horrified gasp, and Steve looked away awkwardly. "Should I... I dunno. Get something? Are we going to be here long?"

"Well my tea is cold," Natasha said. Steve immediately got to his feet. "Can I get you something?" he asked.

"Slow down captain," Natasha smiled. "I'll get it myself. You go ahead first. I can wait a minute longer."

"It's no trouble," Steve said. Natasha smiled and shook her head, and he nodded and got into line. She knew he'd get her something anyway. She would never be able to dissuade him from doing that. It was in him, just the way he was. Captain America, she thought, imagining the old crowds cheering the name in unison. If only they knew...

She watched Steve as he stood in line, his hands intertwining restlessly like the rest of them, commuters and bankers and stock brokers and politicians and teachers and servicemen. None of them knew who Steve was, or what he did, just as he didn't know anything about them. A funny twist of fate, Natasha thought. He'd saved them, more times than they could possibly know. He'd kept their lives calm and comfortable, and he would keep doing it, for as long as he could. Until it kills him, Nat suspected. He stood there in line with all the other people, their dull faces turned to their phones, searching for a quiet moment amidst what they saw as the chaos of their lives. _Nobody knows a hero when they see one_ , Nat reflected. _Guess you can't tell an Avenger just by looking. Lucky me._

Steve returned a minute later with two cups in hand. "People take their coffee seriously nowadays," he said. "Coffee used to be this thing you hated drinking, but you did it to keep warm, or stay awake on a long night. I always hated coffee."

"What'd you get?" Natasha asked, as Steve slid over a cup of tea for her. This one was steaming.

"Coffee," he said, taking a tentative sip. Nat laughed to herself. "How will Sam ever last without us?" she asked.

"You think we should go back?" Steve asked.

"No," Nat said, "it's fine. It was a joke."

"Oh," Steve replied casually, taking another loud sip of his coffee. "So you got here alright. I almost got lost. When you left the safehouse, I didn't think it would be this hard to find. 'Meet me at the place,' used to mean just, you know, one of them. Do you know how many Starbucks I turned into before I found you?"

Nat shook her head. "Well," Steve continued, "a lot. But you said before you left that you wanted to talk about something."

"Yeah," Nat replied. The words were thick in her throat, or maybe her throat was just closing. The moment had come, and she wasn't ready. "You remember... Well, you weren't there. You were on a helicarrier."

"The Triskellion?"

"Yeah," Nat said. "Pierce, he... before it all went down, we leaked everything. All SHIELD's secrets. We had to. Nick agreed. To take away Pierce's leverage, steal Hydra's trump card from them."

"I read the brief," Steve said, "sound likes you really put yourself on the line for the mission in there. You did good work."

"Um... Yeah," Nat said. She was flustered. That was not the response she wanted. "No I... I mean, thanks, but that's not... Look, just stop being the captain for a minute, okay? I don't want to talk about the mission. I want to talk about what it means." The door opened, and Natasha breathed slowly. She felt the crispness of the fall air, the chill of long ago filling her lungs. It was time, and she wasn't ready.

"When I released SHIELD's files, I released everything they had on me. Everything I did for them, and everything from... before. Pierce thought it mattered to me. Thought he could goad me into stopping if he told me that's what it all meant. Even at the hearing, the court thought... it doesn't matter. I made peace with my past. I know what I did, and it doesn't bother me anymore. It's done. But... seeing as my secrets are out there now, I thought I'd just tell you the story. So you could hear it from me. I guess there's more than one way of seeing the story of my past. I'd rather you get my version."

"Okay," Steve said, sounding official. "I like to know my team." Nat smiled, but she rolled her eyes. There was no getting through whatever armour he wore, that first and last line of defence that turned him into Captain America. She brushed by it. "I'd like to start from the beginning, if that's okay with you." The door opened again, and Nat felt herself shiver, though whether it was from the chill or the memories, she wasn't sure. "Sure thing," Steve asked. "You cold?"

"No, it's fine," Natasha said, "I'm used to being cold."

 _Russia, 1999_

Its name is The Motherland Calls. My first memory of Volgograd was being underneath that huge statue. It's in the middle of this square, the _mamyev kurgan_ , and it's huge. Massive. Some say the tallest statue in the world. I don't know about any of that, but it's the first thing I remember about that place. I was underneath it, looking up at this great, grey, screaming woman. In one arm, she's holding a sword, pointing it up at the sky, her other arm pointing off into the distance. Her face is twisted into this battlecry, like she wants to kill somebody. That's the first thing I always remember. That's the face I see in my mind when I think of home. Not the heat in the summer, or the cold in the winter. Volgograd got both. Russia isn't this snowy wasteland like people think it is. Some places get hot. Volgograd was one of them. Stuck between the Black Sea and the Caspian, it's almost tropical. It used to be called Stalingrad, back when the USSR was still around. I never knew that city. I never knew that world. Even though one half of the city was concrete grey, and the other half was communist red, I never knew a world where Russia was at war with the rest of the planet. All I knew was that statue, and life in the alleys between buildings, where nobody wants to look.

I was fourteen at that time, the time I remember looking up at that statue and thinking, why does that woman need to fight? At least I think I was fourteen. I didn't celebrate a real birthday until I arrived in America, and even still I can't see the point. I had no home then, no parents. I had friends, but not the kind that wouldn't sell me for a hot meal. Just that kind, more rats than people. None of it really mattered to me. I was numb to it most of the time. I don't mean to paint this image of a shrivelled kid huddling under threadbare blankets in the snow. It wasn't like that. It's not like it is in the movies. It's worse, in a lot of ways. In most ways. Movies have a happy ending.

Life on the streets was a constant struggle. You fight for warmth when it's cold, for cool when it's hot. You fight to eat when you're hungry, or sometimes when you're not, but you know that you will be. You fight to survive. Sometimes, you just fight. By that time, by fourteen, I knew how to fight. I'd lived for years like that, escaping each orphanage I was snatched up and put into. It was almost worse there. There was still fighting, just not the kind I was good at. It was better to be on the streets, where fighting meant getting by on your own muscle, your own will, your own schemes.

I fought a lot. I fought whenever I had to, everyone and anyone I had to. I fought people I knew, people I thought were my friends. We fought for food, for shelter, we fought because it kept us warm, or kept our minds clear. I fought the police when it was necessary, to get away, to stay out of jail, of orphan homes, of the grave. They would come, in pairs, with sticks that rattled your bones. They kicked me like they kicked stray dogs. They broke ribs. I lost teeth too early. All of it was part of the fight. And each fight made me stronger.

Once, I fought a soldier. He was young, some kind of new recruit, and I beat him so bad he couldn't get up to chase me. I remember his buddies laughing as I ran away. The wind in my face, their jeering in my ears. You got beat by a little girl. I didn't know what that meant, then. I was as tough as any of them. I knew that the only person I could depend on was myself, and I grew to trust in myself, in my skills, in my desire to fight, to win, to survive. Those streets were cold, hot, wet, dry, and grey - everything was grey, except where it was red - but most of all, they were where I fought. They were where I was beaten. They were where I came out stronger. Where I won. That is my earliest memory. And that is where my story starts. That's where he found me.

His name was Ivan Petrovich. He worked for the government, or at least that's what I thought back then. He saw me, and my life changed. To this day, I think it was because of my red hair. It's uncommon in Russia, and though it wasn't so bright back then, it was enough to catch an eye. I'd used it to my advantage before, to get sympathy from vendors with scraps they were going to throw away, or to distract someone I wanted to steal something from. It had its advantages, and never more than on that day.

He pulled up in the cleanest car I'd ever seen, a black limo that stretched on for what felt like an entire block. He stepped out of the back of the car, and I shied away. I knew not to trust people like him, especially men. I knew what men wanted with girls. Lots of girls I knew before thought they could get them to pay for it, but one by one, they all disappeared. 'To America,' people sometimes said. I knew that was a lie. None of them ever came back, and where they went wasn't anyplace good. But Ivan was different. He seemed different, then. He didn't ask anything of me. His shoes clacked cleanly on the cracked pavement. He spoke gently. His voice was low but soft. His accent was clean, not provincial. He sounded like a man from the capital, the kind of man the posters wanted you to trust. He gave me a blanket to keep warm, without me even asking. He offered me food right there on the street. I can still taste it. A beet. They were everywhere, the easiest thing to steal. But this was fresh. Clean. It spurted when I bit into it. The juice ran red like blood down my chin. He saw I was small, and sickly, but strong despite everything. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "Would you like something more?"

I nodded.

He took me to a restaurant that first night, and bought me a meal. That was the first hot meal I ever remember having. He was kind to me. I'll never forget that.

Ivan was an older man, probably old enough to be my grandfather, if I had ever had that kind of thing. He wore a trimmed silver-and-slate beard, which pointed and curled at his chin. His eyes were cold like frosted glass, but when he smiled they lit up so brightly. He had all his teeth, and they were straight and clean and white. That was new to me, it was all new to me. His coat was clean and fine, made of some kind of warm, insulated wool that I envied thoroughly. His hands were big and rough, like he worked a difficult trade, but I never saw Ivan work a day in his life.

That first night, after he'd fed me, given me a blanket and a new coat, and shown me kindness - genuine kindness, for maybe the first time in my life - it was no surprise that I went home with him when he asked. I didn't know what to expect, but if he wanted what all the other girls said men wanted, I would have been ready to give it to him after that day. If he promised more, I didn't know what I'd do. But he didn't. He didn't ask for anything else. He offered me a bed - my own, not his - and let me sleep in peace. My door locked - my door, something I'd never had before - and I made sure it didn't open in the night. No one even touched it. I slept peacefully for the first time, and after that, I knew that whatever came of my life from then on, I owed it to Ivan Petrovich.

Ivan's apartment was a penthouse in one of the tallest buildings in Volgograd. It was a place of opulence, even to my skewed perspective of wealth and power. Nothing there wasn't expensive, or very fine. He had two couches in his living room, and a television in almost every room of the flat. His bathroom was carved from marble; marble counters, marble floors, marble in the shower, which had a head that changed settings to get you clean in different ways. I got clean in every way I knew how, and in some ways I didn't. I ate for the first time without worrying when I'd eat next. Ivan let me taste his vodka, and I felt like a true Russian. I can't drink the stuff to this day, but back then, it burned inside me so good, in a way that filled the emptiness of all those lonely years. In two weeks, I had meat on my bones. My muscles used to be thin and stringy, like a stray cat's, but after two weeks with Ivan, I could barely see them anymore. He saved me. He treated me like family. I was all he had, and he was all I had. I never asked why he took me in. I learned later. But then, I was just happy not to starve. But I missed one thing. I missed the fighting.

So, when Ivan asked if I wanted to help him with something, a project of his, I could only say yes. It was all I wanted to do, to begin repaying a debt I knew I could never fully repay.

"It's a program for girls like you," he said. I had never spent much time with other girls, but the thought was exciting. I followed him down from the apartment and into his limo, in my new dress, in proper shoes, my hair washed and combed and brushed. It fell to my shoulders still, in burning, cascading tangles. "You'll fit right in," Ivan said. "You are just what this program is looking for."

"What is it?" I asked him, as the car began to pull through the streets. It was threatening to rain that day, and the sky was churning with grey waves.

"Tell me, Natalia," Ivan said, "do you like to dance?"

"Never tried," I said.

"Never? I love dancing," Ivan smiled. He smiled a lot, those days. "I should take you to the _Tsaritsynskaya_ to see the ballerinas. Oh, they are beautiful Natalia. Would you like to see them?"

"Girls in pink dresses?" I asked. "Why would I want to see that..."

"They are not what you think, Natalia," Ivan said. Outside, the thunder grumbled in the distance. "They are strong. You must be strong to be a good ballerina. _Prochnost_ ," he said, making a fist with either hand. "Like you. I think you would make a very good ballerina."

"I guess," I said. I looked down at my shoes, and clicked the toes together. The leather made a comforting sound. "Do I have to?"

"Only if you like it, Natalia. But I promise that you will."

"Okay," I said. "What's it called?"

"The Red Room," Ivan said. "Just like your hair. You like red, don't you? It's perfect for you."

"Okay," I said. "I'll see."

"Good girl, Natalia," Ivan said. He folded his arms and leaned back in his seat. "I promise it will all work out for you."

The car sped on, drifting on into the haze in the distance, where the rain was starting to pour.


	2. Chapter 2: I'm Not A Killer

Trigger Warning: Violence, Abuse

 **"So what happened?"** Steve asked. Natasha took a break to sip her tea. Steve just looked at her. There was something in his eyes, something that he wanted to say. Nat tried to keep her mind focused, but sometimes, she liked the way Steve looked at her... Like she could do anything. He inspired that in people. Even she wasn't immune to the charms of Captain America.

"It wasn't so bad at first," Natasha said, running her finger along the edge of her cup. "I liked it, actually, before it became what it really was. To the outside world, we were ballerinas. It even started off that way. I could probably still show you a proper _pas de chat_ , but that's about as far as we got."

"I don't know what that is," Steve said childishly. Nat laughed darkly.

"It doesn't matter. It's just an exercise. Ballet proved the perfect set up for what they wanted us to do. Strength. Discipline. Strict rules, which were never to be broken. Some ballet teachers hit their students. Just taps on the foot, on the sole - _lift that up more_ \- that sort of thing. But we got used to it. We thought it was normal. When it got worse, we didn't question it. We worked harder. There were maybe thirty of us at the beginning, all girls. To the world, thirty perfect ballerinas. Then it became something else."

"And that was The Red Room?"

"Basically," Nat said. "Where it all began."

"How did it start?" Steve asked. "This program. Was it new?"

"No," Natasha said, shaking her head. She remembered the histories they learned, the legacy they were all a part of... "Not at all," she said. "I was the culmination of almost seventy years of diligent work. The program began in the thirties, but it was nothing then. No one took it seriously. But the war changed things. After World War II ended, everyone knew the world had changed. Hydra. The balance of power. It was slipping, and everyone was looking to recreate... well, _you_. No offence."

"None taken," Steve said, leaning back and crossing his arms. His shirt looked like it might pop like a balloon. "If they were trying to create me," he said, "I guess they failed."

"In a way," Nat replied. "But they were going about it all wrong, luckily for the rest of the world. We might be speaking Russian now if fate had been less kind, and you'd have woken up into a very different world. We realized later that, with you, the SSR got lucky. You already _were_ the perfect soldier, you just had the wrong body. But giving someone the perfect body, or the perfect weapon, doesn't make them the perfect soldier. Everyone was going about it looking for an answer in science, technology, medicine. The Red Skull's old notes, Howard Stark, all the stuff we're still doing today. But they were wrong. The perfect soldier isn't created. The perfect soldier has to be _bred_."

"So that's what this was? Training?" Steve shook his head. "I can't believe that kind of thing still existed, so recently."

"It's been around for a long time. The Russian government wasn't going to abandon it until it showed real results. The program was started during World War II, back when it looked like Russia might be in trouble from Schmidt and Hydra. Back then, it was hardly anything. A sideshow. No one cared. But after you, after the scramble for a new _captain_ , it began to look more appealing. While the craze over all the ways to manufacture a superhero was still going on, the program was building, growing, thriving. It wasn't until the mid-forties that the program got its first real test. But by then, it was ready."

"What happened?" Steve asked.

"Russia had lost the chance to buy some of Howard Stark's black market inventions. They tried to strike a deal with some Hydra wannabe called 'Leviathan,' but it went south. The SSR beat them, stopped Leviathan, wrote it into their own history. Another victory. But not for Russia. By then, Russia was out of options, and the program was starting to look really good. The government wanted a proper test, and now, they had a target. The SSR had shamed them. So, they sent sleeper agents into the US, and if you can believe the rumours, they almost managed to kill Howard Stark. The program never said what happened, but I learned later that the SSR stopped them."

"Peggy," Steve said. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he couldn't bring himself to.

"It makes sense," Nat said. "From what I've heard. She would've made a great candidate for the program, not that I'd ever wish it on anyone. Back then, no one suspected anything of women; they hardly do these days. The program took young girls like me - some of them as young as 10 when they started - and taught them how to do whatever they had to. Fight. Shoot. Kill. Seduce. Steal. They made spies. The war was over, but the program had anticipated what Russia would need. The soldiers of the future weren't on the front lines, they were spies. Russia needed a new weapon. They got Black Widow."

"That's how you got your codename?" Steve said. "I never asked. Wasn't sure you wanted to talk about it. I guess now is as good a time as any."

"It's the name I got," Nat said. "It's not the name I wanted."

"And Natasha? Where did that come from? Your file, and in your story... You were born Natalia Romanova."

"When I came to America, I wanted to start over, and I needed a new name. Natalia becomes Natalie pretty easily, and I used that some of the time... Natalie Rushman. Stark still doesn't know what to call me on the best of days. But it was too close. Too similar. There was too much pain in my old name. So I took another one. I made something new for myself, and Natasha Romanoff was born."

"Did it have to be the same initials?" Steve asked with a smile.

"You can only run so far from what you are, Cap. I'm sure you know that."

"Yeah," he said seriously. He leaned forward, and Net felt compelled to move closer to him.

"So this program... If it's been around for decades, there have to have been others."

"Some," Natasha said. "None as promising as me, apparently. There had been Black Widows before me, and there might be more after. There may be another one, right at this moment." Steve shook his head. "At least we know they're not like you," he said. "Nobody's like you." Nat smiled, but she rolled her eyes.

"Thanks," she said. "By the end of the program, there were only a few of us. Less than half made it through training. I don't know what happened to the other girls. But there was this one girl... Yelena. Yelena Belova. I'll never forget her. We were friends, if you can call it that. Before they broke us. Before they took everything from me."

Yelena was blonde.

In a way, that made her like me. All the other girls had dark hair. In Russia, many girls have dark hair. They blend in, disappear into a crowd. They wanted to be shadows, unseen, unheard. But Yelena and me, we were loud. Our hair shone bright in a dark crowd. It spoke through the roar of people. We couldn't hide. That made us different. That made us targets.

Yelena was a bigger girl than me. I liked her, from the moment I first met her. She didn't let being big become a problem for her. She was tall, a head taller than I was for as long as I knew her, and her body was ropey with muscles. Not the kind I had, practical and functional and twisting to their ends, fighting to hang on. Yelena was big. Her arms were like a boy's. Her legs were thick and shaped in smooth curves, hard and sloping, like a car, like an engine of war. She had breasts before any of us, and they got bigger than anyone could have guessed. She dropped the ballet guise first. Ballerinas are small, and dainty. Strong, but delicate. Yelena was not like that. But the teachers liked her. She had the look, eyes like ice, a face cut from stone. She was terrifying, but she was kind. As an enemy, she would fight to kill. As a friend, she would die for her comrades. They picked her first, of the thirty of us. I went third. We were friends before the other seven were selected. They all had brown hair. Yelena and I, we were a team. We had a bond. We shared blood.

That was the first thing they tried to take from us. We weren't friends in The Red Room, we weren't allies. We were competition. Every girl there was led to believe that only one of us would make it through. So we fought, all of us, and when we fought, we fought each other. Yelena and I fought often. I wasn't the smallest, and I certainly wasn't the weakest, but Yelena was bigger than all of us, and some of the smaller girls - the thinner ones who took more easily to ballet - they could outpace her. Their holds were too weak to stop her, but they could wear her down. Tire her. Some of them eventually won. Most lost, but they saw the other's tactics. They improved. Then they started into fighting each other. That left me and Yelena.

I didn't fight like the other girls. I fought like Yelena. Head on. Full force. Precise. Exact. Deadly. It brought us closer. But Yelena was me, only bigger. She was stronger, and at a distance, faster and more agile. I had to close inside her range to do any real damage. She almost always got me before I could make it there. Her fists hit hard. If we pulled our punches, the instructors struck us with a switch. If we missed on purpose, they could tell. We built muscles from resistance. The first time I got punched in the gut, I spat up my breakfast. The twentieth time? The fiftieth? The hundredth? I hardly felt it anymore. Pain was numbing. I'd grown soft in my time with Ivan. By then, when I was fighting Yelena, I barely saw him. We lived on the campus, The Red Room was our home, and there, I grew hard again. Part of me hated it. Part of me missed it, more than I ever knew. And as Yelena and I grew closer over it, over fighting and training and getting better, I knew what I really missed. That connection. That bond of life. The smell of blood, like copper. Like ash. Life and death, in our deadly ballet. Yelena and I gave that to each other.

"You keep your hands too close," Yelena said one morning, as she stood across from me, in the courtyard just outside our dormitory. We were walled in on every side, so no one could see us, and as it was morning, crisp and cool and just before training was to begin, we were free to do what we liked. The sun was barely up. Just Yelena and me, and the quiet of the morning.

"Your guard doesn't protect you. I can still punch, like this, see?" She thrust a fist right at me, but pulled up just short. My eyes strained on the muscles in her bare arm, how they tensed, and then loosened as she pulled away. "You should keep your arms out more, like this," she took a fighting stance, arms bent at almost ninety degrees in front of her face. "Now you can't hit me, and if you strike, I can block, and retaliate, like..." she forced me to punch, and grabbed my limp arm, flipping me so I landed hard on my back, "that!" She laughed. I winced, but looking up at her, I laughed too. "You are a good fighter, Romanova," she said. "Just because I beat you doesn't mean you aren't strong."

"I know," I said. She helped me to my feet. Her hand in mine was warm and comforting. "Why did they choose such a small girl?" she asked. I shrugged. All I could think to say was, "I knew the right people, I guess."

"Or the wrong ones," Yelena smirked. She put her arm around me, enclosing me in her strong embrace. I jabbed her with my elbow, and she winced away. We both laughed. "I like fighting you," Yelena said. "Whatever this is, we will work together. Yes? We will fight together?"

"Yes," I said. She smiled. Her teeth were like mine, crooked, and in the process of being fixed. We'd both worn braces for a time. We had to look the part they wanted us to play.

"Do you promise?" Yelena asked.

"I..." Something choked in my empty throat. The words caught on it.

"What?" Yelena asked.

"I just..." I sighed. I could feel tears forming. I didn't want to cry in front of Yelena. I would never live down the shame. "I've never made a promise before," I said. Yelena laughed.

"It's easy." She offered me her big hand. "We shake. You say something. You mean it."

"I know how it works, stupid," I said. "I've just never done it. So how can I know if I can keep it?"

"You just do," Yelena said. "You say it, and then you mean it. I trust you, Romanova."

"Alright Belova," I said. I took her hand, and squeezed as hard as I could. "Promise."

"They will not break us," she said. "We will break them. We fight together, we cannot lose."

There was something I wanted to say to her then, in the back of my mind. I didn't know then, and I can't seem to face it now, but there was a word, a feeling, forming there that I wanted her to know. Instead, I just said, "can't lose!" Yelena laughed. She laughed like a boy, her mouth wide, her crooked teeth showing, unabashedly. Her voice dropped low, and her laugh rolled like thunder in the empty courtyard. "I like you, Romanova," she said.

"I like you, Belova," I said. "Don't make me regret it." It was close, but not what I wanted to say. We went back inside. Fight training would start soon, and after our warm up, we were ready. We liked to fight, so long as it was together.

What I liked less was all the rest. The dogma. The propaganda. Brainwashing. They didn't just need us to be strong, quick, deadly. They needed us to follow orders. This was important above all else. We had to execute, but we also had to obey. Without question.

This part was hard for me. I was beaten more in the schoolroom than I was in the training yard, or in The Red Room where we took our tests. I learned fast that it wasn't right to speak up. It wasn't right to ask questions. There was no time to misunderstand. Little girls who didn't catch on quickly disappeared without a word. Two were gone in the first month. I was lucky. Those might have been me, and then I don't know where I would have ended up. I rarely saw anyone but my fellow recruits, and Yelena. And the teachers. Big women with switches. Men with broken-in fists. Girls like us. Older, dressed in black, with the bodies of women. _Other students?_ I often wondered. _Graduates? Was it possible to get through? Get out?_ Ivan wasn't there to save me. No one was there. Just me. Me, and whatever I could do to save myself. Like the streets, only harder. Here, people cared, but not in the nice way.

They drilled us for weeks. They taught us to speak American English. We would all be from the midwest, from a small town no one had heard of. We would have no past. It was the past of all Americans. Our history was theirs. We knew every president. I memorized the important ones. Washington. Adams. Jefferson. Madison. Lincoln. Johnson. Grant. Roosevelt. Taft. Wilson. Harding. Eisenhower. Kennedy. Johnson. Nixon. We were better educated than most American children. We learned everything we could. We watched American movies. We watched American television. But we were not to enjoy. It was not for recreation. We would study. We would learn their famous lines. We would remember odd plots and references, inside jokes we did not belong to, in a world half a planet away. We would be them. From the inside, out. By sixteen, I was a little American girl.

"Do girls in America have red hair?" I remember asking.

Ms. Ilsa struck me.

"May we watch more movies in our free time?" I asked. I loved the American films. I had never seen one before then, and I wanted more.

Ms. Sonya struck me.

"Must I strike below the belt?" I asked in training.

Mr. Anatoly struck me.

I learned quickly. I grew silent. The only person I could trust was myself.

And Yelena. There was always Yelena. After we fought, she held me, or I held her. We did it in private, where no one else could see. Her arms enclosed me, her hand tight around her own wrist, and I felt safe. My arms could barely make it around her, but when she was hurt, when she cried in her private moments, I held her by her thick, tight waist. They tried to split us apart in training. We were not allowed to sit together in the classroom. We were forbidden to speak wherever we could be seen. We were made to fight. They wanted us to hate each other. But we learned. We grew. And in doing so, we became closer.

I shared Yelena's bed more than once, and she mine. We never touched each other, except when one of us was sad, and needed a closeness neither of us understood. We knew it wasn't what we were meant to do. When the girls were old enough, they taught them how to make men love them. Even at sixteen, they made us think of men. Men of all ages. Boys, grown men, old men. Women were nothing to the organization. Just tools. In a way, that's what Yelena and I were to each other. Tools, to feel better when we cried at night, to feel safe when we felt alone, to feel strong when our muscles gave out, our spirits faltered, our minds nearly broke. That word I wanted to say, that feeling I needed to express... Yelena was that to me, and more. Whatever bond we had, it was sealed a thousand times over by our trials. We were both certain that they could not shatter our bond. But _that_ is what they took away from us. A black widow has no room for that kind of connection. Her affection is poison. Her love is death.

A black widow eats her mate.

In the final days of testing, they made sure at least one of us knew it.

I stood at the end of the room, a red circle on the gymnasium floor between myself and Yelena. The remaining recruits - three girls, each with dark hair and flat, dead, cold eyes - were watching. All in uniform - black shirt, black pants, black shoes, red belt, hair tied back in a black ribbon - they looked the same. Three ghosts, watching us. Every teacher was there. Everyone involved in the program. I didn't understand then. Yelena was smiling, bouncing on the balls of her feet. This was our final test, but to us, it was another sparring match. A walled-in mezzanine with sharp, thin windows looked down on us. Silhouettes paced up there, watching; more ghosts. Mr. Anatoly was in the ring with us, inside the red circle, officiating, making sure we fought hard, we didn't give up. He brought us to the centre, and with his hand firmly on our shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh, he spoke privately to us.

"You will fight as hard as you can. You will obey what you are told to do. You will make this program proud, and one of you may find yourself moving up."

I nodded, first to Mr. Anatoly, then to Yelena. She did the same, but she added, with an almost imperceptible motion, a quiet, private, intimate wink for me. We knew how to dance together, to make our fight look real and violent and visceral. It was a test. Everything was a test, but this was one of our own invention. We were testing _them_ , to see if they could tell. Yelena stretched her long arms and walked backward to her place at the end of the red circle. I did the same, trying to clear my mind. My shoulder ached, and my stomach was sore from training the day before. Yelena never showed her pain, not to anyone but the darkness and me. She breathed in deeply, and her chest rose, the muscles in her stomach tightened into knots. I tensed my own body. I felt it tighten, I felt it loosen, then tighten again. Mr. Anatoly took his place between us, and everything froze. My breath turned to ice. The room turned from red to frigid white. Mr. Anatoly's hand moved through the frozen air at a fraction of an inch per second. I stared at it, then my eyes met Yelena's. Her cool eyes smiled, and time resumed. Mr. Anatoly's signal ended, and Yelena was halfway across the circle before I could react.

I dodged. It was the only option left to me. I dropped to my knees and rolled sideways, trying to get behind her while still staying inside the ring. Step outside the ring, and you lost. I wouldn't lose. We would show them what a team we made.

I rolled beside her, and Yelena turned in an instant. I prepared for a kick, but she sidestepped towards me and jabbed. My guard held, just like she told me, and I managed to get out of her reach as her last two punches swatted the air. She raised her fists, and I raised mine, and the fight started for real.

Yelena and I had a rhythm. I would go on the offensive and strike, and she would block, and I would grapple her, or dodge and kick, or strafe her retaliation, and get away, only for her to return on the offensive herself, and I would do as she did. She tricked me a few times, got a jab in when I wasn't expecting it, or sweeping my legs and taking me to the floor, only for me to roll her and pin her. I could have taken her out then, beaten her to a pulp until she gave in, but I didn't. That wasn't the dance. Instead, I subtly shifted my weight, and she managed to throw me, and the fight resumed anew.

I got Yelena a few times, too. I wanted to impress them, even if it meant hurting my friend. She had done the same to me, so why not? She wasn't perfect, and in training together, I knew her weaknesses. She left her face unguarded. She thought I was too small. I forced her guard up by jabbing up at her chin, which I could hardly reach if she ducked backwards. When she focused on defending her face, I went for her belt. I caught my fist on her hip once, and my knuckle wouldn't stop smarting until the fight was over. But I got her in her strong stomach more than once, and after the first few blows, she was showing it. Taking a punch when you're prepared is different than taking a hit you can't see coming. After a while, Yelena started to look tired. Her guard shifted back down. By then, my blood was pumping. My heart was racing. The training took over. I was seeing red.

Yelena missed a jab, and as she stumbled forward, her face came towards me. I caught her in the chin, and I knew at once - as the shiver of the blow reverberated all the way to my shoulder - that she was seeing stars. She wheeled back, automatically assumed a defensive stance, then faltered. "Hit her!" Mr. Anatoly screamed, from what sounded like a mile away. "Finish her!"

Yelena was beaten. I would make it quick. She would want it that way. I ducked in towards her, edged closer as I slid my feet along the red floor, and caught her below her guard. She punched once, twice, but they were weak, and I turned the momentum against her. She slowed, she stumbled, and before I knew what I was doing, my mind rolled on like a machine, and I was in the air.

I kicked Yelena with both feet flat against her stomach, and she fell flat on the ground, her head bouncing off the floor. I landed, stumbling, but on my feet. When Yelena didn't rise, I turned to the others, and waited, panting, my breath hot in my lungs.

Mr. Anatoly looked displeased. I was confused. _I won_ , I remember thinking... _didn't I?_ The ghosts in the mezzanine were grumbling. "Finish her," Anatoly hissed. My eyes went wide. "Finish her," he repeated.

"She's down!" I shouted, pointing at her prone form. Anatoly looked like he wanted to kill me. His eyes narrowed, and he bared his teeth.

"Your enemy falls, they can get back up. You finish them, they will never rise."

"I'm not a killer!" I shouted. My voice cracked, and I felt like a child. My body ached. Yelena was still on the floor.

"No?" Anatoly said. He stepped towards me, and instinctively, I took a fighting stance. When he was close enough, I struck at him. His arms found my wrists, and in a blinding flash of pain, I was on my knees, my arm twisted behind my back. "You finish her," Anatoly snarled in my ear, his breath hot on my neck, "or I break this arm." He twisted, and I screamed. Hot tears burst in my eyes, but my mind was crying something else. _No. NO. NO!_

"I won't!" I cried, and with all the strength left in me, I rolled, and took Anatoly off his footing. He went to the ground, and I was back up before him. I struck him, clean across the cheek, bruising my already injured knuckles. I got in three good hits, and two glancing blows, before his foot caught me in the stomach. The air left me all at once.

Blood flew between my teeth. I sailed through the air in a graceful arc before I landed beside Yelena. She was breathing slowly, and could barely roll her eyes towards me. I couldn't look at her. Instead, I struggled back to my feet. Anatoly was coming at me. There was red on his cheek. I screamed. I roared. I howled, and I flew at him. My training disappeared. I was on the streets again. I know I hurt him then. But it was not enough. He sent me to the floor, and it was for the last time. My strength gave out. I gave in. Anatoly lifted me by my red hair, and I couldn't resist. He reached down to my waist and ripped my shirt off over my head. I knew what was coming. In my black sports bra, my back showed enough. The scars. Yelena struggled to rise. Neither of us wanted this. I heard the switch fetched from the far end of the room. Then, a voice cut through the silence.

"Natalia," it said. I was on my knees. Just like I had been back then... When he first found me.

The voice was Ivan.

I looked up to the mezzanine, my eyes pleading. I couldn't see him, but he was watching me. "Natalia," he said again. His voice filled the Red Room.

"Finish her."

" _NO!_ " I screamed, and the switch cracked across my back. I screamed again, and my entire body tensed. With a great effort, I found my feet. I stood. Every muscle in my body screamed with me, and the switch broke them down one by one. Yelena looked at me like an animal with her leg in a trap. She knew what was coming, and she couldn't stop it. Standing there, I towered over her for the first time.

I did as I was told. I will never forget that day. I will never forget when my body, my mind, everyone I knew and everything I'd learned, betrayed me. They broke Natalia Romanova, and Yelena Belova paid the price. By the end, her face was red. Her breath came in choking gasps. My body was bleeding and drenched in sweat. I had cried every tear I could cry. My eyes were _red_. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, to help her, I wanted to lick her wounds and kiss her and tell her it would be alright. But I wouldn't see her for weeks after that. The Red Room had taken its toll, and they got what they wanted. _Ivan_ got what he wanted all along. I had trusted him, and then, I knew I was wrong. I owed my life to Ivan. I will always remember that. But the life he gave me in return... It was not what I wanted. It was what _he_ wanted.

I was right, after all. Everything I became, I owed to Ivan.

He took Yelena from me, but he could never make me kill her. That was my final victory. I struck her, I ended the fight, but they wanted me to continue, and I wouldn't. I paid the last of the price. But the damage was done. When they named me victor of that final test, my face was stone. My heart was still. I was empty. All I knew was that, whatever I'd lost, Ivan had taken it from me.

So, when I was told that I would be allowed to meet him once again, I had only one thought in my mind.

It was not gratitude. It was revenge. Red, red, revenge.


	3. Chapter 3: Widow's Bite

"Nat," Steve said. He never called her that, not unless something serious was happening. Serious, in the kind of private, quiet way. Most often, he called her _Romanoff_. "I'm so sorry," he said. "You don't have to keep telling me this. I understand."

"You don't," Nat said. "And I do. If I don't know, I'll never let it go. But..." She looked around the coffee shop. Children. Families. Couples. "This was a bad idea," she said. "I want to get out of here."

"Sure," Steve said. "We can go back to the safehouse."

"Alright," Nat said, getting to her feet. She felt tired, like she was back there, all those years ago. "I need a walk anyway."

The afternoon was winding down, and as the sun disappeared behind city hall, the air began to cool even further. Nat rubbed her arms instinctively, trying to keep the cold memories at bay. Without a word, Steve took off his jacket. "Here," he said. "Take it."

"I'm not a matinee damsel, Rogers," Nat said. "Keep your coat."

"Can't you just accept someone's help for once?" Steve said. "I've got a lot more on me to keep me warm."

"You calling me skinny?"

"No," Steve said. "I mean... not in a bad way. You are thin. Well, you're in shape."

"Shut up," Nat said, trying to hide her smile. "Give me the damn coat."

"This could've been a lot easier if you just took it in the first place."

"Just shut up and walk, captain."

They walked for some time, meandering through the quiet paths of the Boston Common, Boston's own, miniature Central Park. Willows hung lazily over the well-worn paths, or over the many small ponds, where tourists pedalled swan-shaped boats, and geese honked as they coasted gently by. The two Avengers walked like any two other people in the crowd, never drawing anyone's eye for more than a few seconds.

Nat and Steve were used to hiding in plain sight. To most people, they looked like a couple, and they used that to their advantage. Before they'd settled in Boston, they'd searched every SHIELD base on the east coast, and with no resources, no black Lexus coups waiting for them on every corner, they had to improvise.

They'd gotten so good, they almost slipped into it naturally. Especially with Natasha wearing Steve's coat, it was almost second nature. Nat walked closer to him, and sometimes he put his arm around her. With the baseball cap low over his eyes, he was unrecognizable. No one would spot Natasha; what few pictures of her online were carefully guarded, and rarely trafficked. There was no way to know who she was or what she looked like. Together, as two lovers in the park, even the most highly trained Hydra agent would have to look twice to think anything of them. Just once, Steve put his hand onto Natasha's waist, just above the hem of her jeans.

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable," Steve whispered, bending down so his lips were level with her ear.

"Easy, soldier," Nat said. Steve pulled away at once. "I'm just kidding, Rogers," Nat laughed. "Just don't get any bright ideas."

"It'd be the first time that's happened," Steve sighed.

"Come on," Nat said. "I need to sit."

They found a bench beneath a willow. Nat sat facing the water, Steve's coat draped over her shoulders. She folded her hands in her lap, and her breath settled a little, her heart slowing to a gentle rhythm. It was quiet there. Nat savoured it. She had so few moments of quiet in her life.

"I have to ask," Steve said, after a moment, "you said it wasn't so bad, at the start. But that, with Yelena... how could it have gotten worse?"

"I meant before, when she and I were friends. But it did get worse. They'd showed we could be broken. Then, they needed to build us into what they needed us to be."

"Did you see her again? Yelena?"

"Yeah, I did," Nat said. "Many times. We were partnered together on a lot of missions. I was the only one to become the Black Widow, but the others, the few they thought they could work with, they became agents. But it was never the same. Not after that day, that fight. The program had taken its toll on both of us."

"I'm sorry," Steve said. "I've lost a lot of good soldiers. When I lost Bucky... I thought it would destroy me."

"It's not that much different," Nat said. She looked at Steve in his cool eyes. "At least we have that in common," she said with a smirk.

"I think we have a bit more than that," Steve said. "Do you feel like talking any more? What ever happened with Ivan? Did you see him again?"

"Didn't I mention?" Nat said. "We did meet one more time. After the fight, they told me I'd be graduating, moving up to more intensive training before everything was finalized. It was a formality. Everyone knew I was the candidate. I wasn't the toughest, or the smartest, or the fastest, but I was the most dangerous combination of the three. That's what they wanted. They had it, and I knew it. So when I was sent to meet Ivan, it really was the end of my training."

"Obviously, he was involved."

"He was the head of everything, as far as I knew. He orchestrated the whole thing, inherited the job from whoever had it before. I wasn't the first girl he'd picked off the street. But I was the first Black Widow he'd chosen himself. He was proud."

"How did you feel?"

"The last time I saw him... He gave me the Widow's Bites. They were experimental tech at the time. SHIELD's version is based on them, with some minor differences. 'Wasp Stings,' the development team called them. An upgrade, of a kind. More reliable, less risk of shocking myself. And some other key differences."

"Like what?"

"Wasp stings hurt. Widow bites kill."

 _Russia, 2001_

That night, Ivan looked different. Older, maybe, more sinister. The only light he had on in his apartment was a harsh, pale neon, and it buzzed in the back of my mind the whole time I was there. It was the last time, and though I didn't know it yet, I had a feeling I couldn't shake, there in the dark corner at the back of my mind, with the buzzing, and my growing anger at Ivan.

That last, little excursion back to Ivan's apartment was meant to be a reward. I'd won, though no one had officially said anything. I'd done what they wanted, and I would graduate onto actual field training soon after. This was my sojourn, it was shore leave. It was supposed to be happy. But my fists were tight. My body was shaking. I could hardly look at Ivan. I knew, then, exactly why he'd chosen me, so I shouldn't have been surprised. I shouldn't really have been angry. But I was. More than I can ever remember being angry before.

"You have done well, Natalia," Ivan said. "More than any of us expected. And I imagined great things for you when I found you. I knew you were just what we were looking for. But you have exceeded even my expectations. I am proud of you, my dear girl."

"Thank you," I said. My voice was flat, dull, empty, hard as stone. It didn't sound familiar to me. Neither did Ivan's. I lived in a world of strangers. I was an alien to this planet. I did not belong. My fists were shaking, my knuckles white and bloodless.

"You understand what this means, don't you Natalia? You will be moving on. We will not see each other much anymore, though I know we haven't had much time together for the past few years. Well, you understand I think. You are a smart girl, Natalia. You will do your country proud."

"Thank you," I said again.

We stood in his bedroom. It was the first time I really remember seeing it. A television hung on the wall. His bed was twice as wide as the one in the program's dormitory where I'd slept for the last two years. The sheets were some kind of fine, foreign silk. He had the drapes closed to the rain, but through a fold, I could see the grey sky beyond. And I could hear it. It started out slow, then began to thunder, until the rain drowned out the buzzing of the neon lamp.

"You are upset Natalia," Ivan said. He frowned, in the cartoonish way he used to frown when I was melancholy, when he first found me. I liked it, then. Now, it felt mocking. He was looking down on me. "Here," he said, "this will make you feel better." He turned to a box that lay on his bed and handed it to me. It was heavy, and I was afraid to touch it. "What is it?" I asked.

"Open it," Ivan said.

Mechanically, I did what I was told. I hated myself for doing it, for following another order, but it was what he had asked, and I had no other choice. I pulled the lid off the box, and inside rested two glowing gauntlets. Pieces of metal, like bullets but black as night, strung together by an electric light, which pulsed and hummed like a heartbeat. "Why not try them on?" Ivan asked with a smile. He was so proud. I hated him. I hated his pride. I hated all of it.

I slid the gauntlets on over my fists. There was a small, fingerless gloved looped inside, and I had to unclench my fists to put it on. But when my fingers closed again, I felt a new power there, something thrumming in time with the rage in my blood and the thunder grumbling plaintively outside. When both were on, I clenched and unclenched my fists over and over. The gloves responded with a crackling, electric power.

"These are new," Ivan said. "You are the first person to use them. I hope you are happy. We have officially named them Widow's Bites. Very fitting."

I only looked at him. He saw the ice in my eyes, but not the ice in my veins. My blood ran cold as a tingle crept up my spine, like the spindly fingers of a spider. "Say something, Natalia," he said. He smiled again.

"Thank you," I forced myself to say.

"You don't mean it," Ivan said.

"Yes I do."

"No," Ivan said. "You don't. Something troubles you, Natalia."

"Stop - "

"I will not. We must discuss it. This program has invested a great deal in you. Everything has to be perfect."

"I'm not - "

"Is it that girl, Natalia?"

My heart stopped, and the rain seemed to freeze with me. I could hardly breathe. My hands were numb with the thrumming heat on my wrists.

"She is alive," Ivan said. "She will recover. And she, too, will serve her country, in her own way. But you are stronger, Natalia. You should feel proud."

I kept my face calm. On the surface, it was smooth, pale, demure. Beneath, the muscles were writhing, waiting for me to release, or else they would snap like elastic.

"You must not be upset for what we asked you to do," Ivan said. "It was necessary. The girl is meaningless. _You_ are what we need, Natalia."

"Don't," I said. This time, he did not cut me off, but it was all I could say.

"You will put her from your mind. You will forget. And you will obey the orders given to you. As you did. You did _well_ , Natalia. Remember your training..."

"Say her name," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"I told you..." I said, "to say her name."

"The girl?"

"Say it."

"I don't know it, Natalia. Your's is the only name that matters."

" _NO!_ " I cried. I stamped my foot like a child, and my arms went tense, ready to strike. My whole body coiled, like a snake. "Say her _name!_ "

"Natalia..."

" _NO!_ " I cried. I wanted to smash the windows. I wanted to tear the apartment to the ground. I wanted to breathe smoke. "You will be _silent_ ," Ivan spat ferociously.

"No," I said. "You will."

I leapt at him. I'd never soared like that before, but so coiled, I was ready to spring. I crossed the room in a single bound, and was upon him in a flash. He knocked me aside deftly. Despite his age, he had some skill, unforgotten from whenever he'd last learned and used it. I crashed into the table beside his bed, and he loomed over me, his shadow dark under the neon light. I was on my feet in an instant, but he brushed my aggression aside with a wave of his hand. "Natalia, please," he said, "this is pointless."

I roared. I screamed. I flew at him with my arms flailing, but he was too tall, too strong, too fast, surprisingly so, and managed to flip me. The breath was sucked from my lungs as my back struck the floor, and Ivan repositioned himself at the foot of the bed. "You are ruining everything we've given you," Ivan said. "Stop now, before more damage is done."

"You don't know what you made!" I cried. "You don't know what you've done!"

"Natalia," Ivan said. "You really think that - "

I struck him, and the words never came. After that, he was less interested in talk. We fought for real.

He won, almost every time we clashed. But each of his victories made the fire inside me burn brighter, and hotter, until every inch of my body was aflame and there was nothing else for me to do but burn the world down. So I kept fighting. It was the same as with Anatoly. The same as with Yelena. The same as with every other fight I'd had, except the stakes were higher, the blows harder, the weight more final. This fight was to the death.

Ivan caught me by surprise, and he curled his fingers around my neck. He did not intend to hurt me unnecessarily - he still needed me, after all - but he wanted to weaken me, until I could no longer fight back. I struck at him. The gloves responded with my fists, and something flashed, and a crack like lightning tore through the air. Ivan recoiled with a wail. My skin went cold. I thought I'd done it. In a panic, I scrambled on the floor like an animal, skittering away from where Ivan fell. But he rose from the floor, larger than before. Something burned on his face. His skin looked terrible. The look in his eyes was even worse. "Natalia," he said. My name sounded vile on his lips.

I tried to strike first, to use my speed, my smaller size, but it was useless. Now Ivan was fighting for real. Now he would hurt me. Now he didn't care. He dodged my attack, and his boot connected with my stomach. I was lifted off the ground. Something smashed, and suddenly rain was hitting my face. He had kicked me onto the balcony, through the curtains and the closed doors.

It was over, or at least it should have been. I was soaked within a minute. My back lay in a puddle on the concrete, while the rain pelted my face. I was bleeding somewhere, I didn't know from how many places. All I remember was Ivan standing over me. His presence was a threat: move, and be beaten further, stay still, comply, and it will end. I was torn. I still hated him. I still wanted to fight. But could I? _Should_ I? What use was my hatred? What good would revenge do?

"Is it finished, Natalia?" Ivan asked. His face was irreparably scarred. At least I had done that to him. "Is it over now? It has always been this way. You had no other choice. Once you came with me, this was the only outcome. This, or death. You have succeeded. You have overcome. You are strength, Natalia, you are power. You are _Russia_ , our best hope. Why must you do this? Why must you fight?"

"Yelena," I breathed. It was not a response to him. Her's was the only name on my mind, the only thought on my lips. "This should not have happened," Ivan said. "The conditioning should have taken hold. This must be rectified." I realized he was speaking mostly to himself. He turned away from me, and I lifted myself onto my elbows. "This attachment will only hurt our chances," Ivan murmured. "It must be ended."

"Ivan."

"You misunderstand me, Natalia," Ivan said. "You are affectionate. This is good. But it must be controlled. It must be measured. It..."

He never finished what he would say. But I knew it. He hit the ground. Unprepared, I was able to use his full weight against him, and I brought him down where I had been. Flat on his back, in the rain. I was soaked through, and the chill had settled deep in my bones. Deeper, even. My entire body was cold, through to my heart. "Natalia," he said. "Don't..."

"Don't say my name."

Ivan did not die gracefully. I did not kill well, then. It was the first time. I had to learn. But I would. And that first death, my first _kill_ , would never leave me.

The water conducted the jolt of the Bites. The electricity rippled almost through the sky, into the air. I could feel the heat off it, and my hands tingled until they went numb. The weapons weren't perfect. Experimental. They hurt me to use them, but they were effective. I learned that quickly. Ivan lay under me, eyes blank, mouth open. Tears burned hot trails down my face, still soaked by the rain. I was alone in the world again. All alone.

But it was in that moment when I realized. I was _free_. They program had let me visit Ivan. I was not monitored. I was not being watched, or prodded, or trained. Ivan would have returned me, but Ivan was... I was _free_.

My body acted on its own. I had no time to think. I left Ivan's apartment with only the clothes I wore, and the Bites. It rained for two days afterwards, and I never got fully warm. But I was free. Or at least, I thought so at first...

When they found me, when the program came after me, it wasn't just the teachers, or the students. They brought everything. That's when I really learned what it meant to fight for my life. That's when it all went to hell. My first real test as the Black Widow.

Ivan was right about one thing, though. I'd said I wasn't a killer. I was wrong. He had done that to me, at the cost of his own life. As I left his apartment that night, disappearing into the rainy streets, I wondered if he'd be proud. He got what he wanted, after all.


	4. Chapter 4: Stick With Me

"Wow," Steve said sombrely.

The park was quietly emptying, and the sun was hovering low on the horizon, threatening to set. The air was humid, and the sounds of the Common had faded away, slowly dissolving into the background as Natasha took a long, slow, deep breath. "Yeah," she said. " _Wow_."

"I always knew, you know?" Steve said cautiously. "In the back of my mind. I knew. But... it's hard. The first time is always hard... But that. It's hard to hear. I'm sorry."

"It's hard to say," Nat replied, and sighed again, this time more heavily. Though it had been hard, to relive a time in her life she had tried to beat from her memory in every way possible, she nevertheless felt that a weight had lifted. "You may be the only person left alive who knows that about me," Nat continued. "My files are out there, but even that wasn't in them."

"That's a heavy burden to bear," Steve said. "I'm glad if I can take some of that weight off."

"Thanks," Nat said. She wanted to smile, but the effort exhausted her, and she couldn't manage it. "Do you want to keep walking?" Steve asked. Nat thought for a moment. She was tired, and comfortable where they were, wrapped in Steve's jacket with no one around, almost like they really were normal. But it was no use running from what she'd known was coming all along. "No," she said, "let's head back."

"Okay. Lead the way."

The brisk afternoon promised a cool, pleasant evening. The walk from the Common to the safe house was a short one, but they found some measure of enjoyment in it. They didn't speak much, instead lingering in the calm silence between one chapter of the story and another. It would be easier to keep talking in the safe house itself. In a way, it was like home. It was their own.

When they'd arrived in the city, they'd almost had their pick of apartments in Boston; apparently SHIELD still held some influence in the world. As such, they'd chosen one just away from the city centre, inconspicuous enough so as not to draw attention, and removed from any bustling areas, like Faneuil Hall, or the wharf.

The day began to darken as Natasha and Steve made their way back. Natasha had often felt that the calm of the evening relaxed her. She liked the quiet of the city, and the distant noises of the emptying streets. As gentle orange lights began to flicker to life in the windows they passed by, she felt that sensation come over her again, and the dark past faded away into the calm, peaceful present.

Steve was hard to read as he walked along beside her. He looked up and down the streets curiously, peering down alleys and into the windows of shops, closing down for the day. He smiled politely at people as they passed by, so much so that Nat had to occasionally nudge him, to remind him they were trying not to draw attention to themselves. He took it in stride. He would apologize and continue on, as if nothing in the world had changed. "I've never been to Boston," he said. "Wait... I may have had a performance here. But I never really got outside the theatres, back then."

"What do you think of it, now you're here?" Nat asked absently.

"I dunno," Steve said. "It's no New York."

"I knew you'd say that."

"Oh, now I'm predictable?" Steve smiled.

"Your jokes are a little tired."

"Well, they are, what? 70 years old?"

"My point exactly," Nat said.

"If I knew being funny was going to be an important part of being Captain America," Steve said, "I would have paid closer attention to Bucky when - "

He stopped. Nat looked up at him with genuine concern in her eyes, and raised her hands gently towards his face. "It's okay," she said. "Don't worry. Steve? You're alright."

"I'm not the Hulk, Nat," he said, but his caution was evident in his voice. "I just... It hits me sometimes. I... I don't want to talk about it."

"I get it," Nat said. "The past is hard to talk about, sometimes."

"Trust me," Steve replied, "it's worse when it comes back to bite you."

"Come on," Nat said. "We're almost at the safe house."

"Where the hell have you guys been?"

Sam Wilson was waiting for them when they arrived. He had the TV on, and its glow, and the sound of whatever game Sam was watching, filtered in from the other room. He was at the fridge when they slipped in the door, and he shut it with his foot as he balanced a pair of drinks and a bowl of some leftovers in his hand. "You guys hungry, or what?"

"We just went to get some coffee," Steve said awkwardly.

"And some fresh air," Nat added, slipping off Steve's coat, hoping Sam hadn't seen. "We're fine."

"Oh, yeah I see," he said, turning back to the other room. "I can tell when I'm a third wheel, guys. You want me to leave, I'll go. You just say the word."

He was joking, but it hit a little too close to home, and Nat and Steve didn't talk much as they made their way into the living room with Sam. He flopped down on the couch, and started eating out of the serving bowl with a fork; it was chilli, and it was still cold. "You want me to heat that up for you?" Steve asked.

"No, it's fine like this," Sam said. "It's a three point game with 40 seconds left. I don't have time to heat up food."

"That's why I offered," Steve said.

"Just sit man, you're blocking the TV."

Nat smiled and rolled her eyes, and Steve joined Sam for the rest of the game; the Knicks lost. Nat didn't see much of Steve until the TV went dark, and he and Sam were finished talking. She couldn't help but listen in, through the walls, from the kitchen. The apartment was small (despite having three bedrooms) and it was hard enough not to overhear nearly everything that was said, but Nat was anxious, and she needed to know if Steve would let anything about their conversation slip. It wasn't about lack of trust; she trusted Steve, and Sam, to a degree. It was just a general anxiety, about having her secrets out there in the world, and having someone - someone close to her, at that - know them, have them in their head, and have that chance to speak them, whenever they wanted. That's the power she gave to anyone who she told. That's the fear she'd lived with, and the reason she'd kept everything bottled up, for years.

Of course, honourable Steve Rogers said nothing.

It was after ten o'clock when Steve and Sam were finished talking, and Sam finally got ready to retire. He gave both of them an update on the chatter he'd monitored while they were out, but there was nothing of real value. They'd tracked their best lead to Boston, and it hadn't led to anything so far. Nat was finding it hard to care. She was preoccupied.

"So that's it," Sam concluded, "unless you guys found anything out there that you wanna tell me about."

"Like I said," Steve responded at once, "just coffee."

"You hate coffee," Sam said, but he didn't press the issue. He understood, maybe not as well as he might have if he knew Steve or Nat as well as they knew each other, but he understood enough not to press. He was speaking to Captain America, after all. "Alright, well I'm gonna leave you guys to it. Maybe I'll go get some coffee tomorrow, seeing as that's what we're doing now."

"Night Sam," Steve said, keeping his tone friendly.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Good night."

He walked off silently, but Nat could tell he had no ill will in his voice. Just frustration, if that. Sam was a good man. Steve chose his companions well.

"I feel like we're keeping something from him," Steve said quietly, when Sam's door finally closed. Nat shook her head.

"We're not," she said. "But we should be more careful about what we do, if we decide to speak again out of the safe house. That was my mistake. I should have been smarter."

"Hey," Steve said gently, and he took Nat's hand as she waved it erratically in front of her face. "It's alright. Stop blaming yourself. You need to let that go."

"I know," she said, and gently slid her hand out of his.

"Do you want to keep talking? You don't have to."

"No," Nat said. "I mean yes, I do. But I know. I know I don't. But I want to."

"Alright," Steve said, "I'm all ears."

"Okay. Find me a drink first."

I ran. It was the only thing I could do. I knew I was free, but I knew just as certainly that they'd come after me eventually. I was their crown jewel, their greatest prize, and without me, they had wasted years of training, energy, and government money. Even back then, barely 17 years old, I knew they wouldn't let that happen. So I ran. I ran as far as I could go.

I had to stay out of the cities. That was the first thing. While the cities were populated, and I could disappear into any crowd, I knew I would always be wondering who among those crowds was actually trying to hunt me down. I also assumed that the agents of the Red Room would be more likely to be based out of urban locations than rural ones. My next option, then, was to dissolve into the wilds, hiding in villages and between towns, where I might truly disappear. I didn't know where I was headed - out of Russia, I guess - but I knew I had to go somewhere else, and never come back.

I was grateful for my training in those days. It was because of it that I survived. I knew how to stay out of sight when I didn't want to be detected, how to draw or divert attention when necessary, and how to fight and struggle to survive, better than I ever had before.

It was rough. I stole. I fought. But I never killed. I knew I had the Bites, if I ever needed them, but after what happened with Ivan... Truthfully, I was afraid. I was afraid of what the program had done to me, that I could do that, and that it felt so... easy. So simple. It wasn't a struggle. It didn't need to be. It was a nearly bloodless death. It was too easy. So though I knew I had them, just in case, if I got into a tight spot, if I needed to escape, to fight to stay alive... Other than that, they stayed off. I didn't use them. It wasn't right.

At first, it wasn't so bad; I feel like I say that a lot. Maybe I'm just hardy. Maybe I'm stupid. But it felt that way, anyway. Being free, even alone and on the run, was better than being in there, in that room, with those people, doing... whatever they asked. Outside, in the breeze, under the sky, I could do whatever I wanted.

I remember walking through a forest, near the beginning. I say 'the beginning,' but that might be misleading. It took me weeks to get into the proper wild, well out of whatever city the Red Room was based out of; Moscow, I learned later. Beyond the city, beyond the suburbs and the nearby towns, the trees were all pine, spruce, that kind of thing. Hardy, and green even in the snow. The taiga, it's called. A boreal forest that runs across most of the northern part of Russia, below the tundra; they have some in Canada too. I'd like to go there, if I ever get the chance. It was relaxing. The trees muffle the noise, but they kind of cycle it too; sounds echo, things speak across vast expanses, and I never truly felt alone. This was a bad thing, as well. In the beginning, I never knew when someone was close or a hundred yards away. The crack of a branch that I'd stumble upon after a day of walking would sound like the snap of a twig by my makeshift bedroll the night before. But I learned. They'd taught me that, too; how to adapt, how to change, how to evolve. I learned the language of the forest, and soon it spoke in tongues I could understand.

That's how I found them. That's how I found the men who took me in.

To most people I passed, I was a gypsy, a vagrant. When they looked at me - if they looked at all - they saw a slinking shadow, which would soon be gone. I was never anything anyone paid any mind to. That's how I got by, and how I had to live. I knew that, if someone associated with the Red Room spotted me, even for a second, I'd have weeks of danger on my hands. They were as good as me, if not better, and I would have a hard time eluding them.

But this group was different. Their eyes were keen, and they had a good sense of what was going on around them. Not like someone trained to it, not like the Red Room, more like someone born to it, like an animal. Instinct.

I first heard them for the first time in the forest. I'd been camped out for months, trying to find a way out, a path, a route, a road, anything; it didn't occur to me until later that I had been going in circles. It was lucky for me, then, that I was camped out in the woods that night, between towns I haunted, slipping in invisibly, and returning laden with supplies for a few days. I never slept in the towns. I'd learned my lessons early on, and had always sought natural shelter when I bedded down; caves, and failing that, protective rock barriers, or even a cliff face, where animals were unlikely to venture, and people were too frightened to go. I thought I was alone. The forest whispered that it was safe to sleep. But that night, with all this buzzing in my head, I heard them as I lay there, and I froze.

They were like a breath in the breeze, almost undetectable. But they were there. Moving as a group. Organized. Synchronized. A pack, but not animals. Boots on stone. I was awake in a moment, but my body refused to move. The night seemed to deepen around me, growing more black, like I was sinking beyond the depths of light into the Atlantic. The stars were veiled by smoky clouds, and the silent heartbeat of the forest - all the sounds that said it was alive - drifted into muffled silence as my ears strained to hear them. Human, undeniable. What do I do? I thought frantically. Do I run? Do I fight? Do I stay here and hide, and leave it to fate that they don't find me?

The decision was made for me. Paralyzed by fear and by my own blindness in the dark, I listened for the next two hours as the boots slowly made their way away from me. They were travellers, not hunters, moving from one town to the next. Why they chose to move at night still worried me, but that they were not on my trail allowed me to relax. They didn't find me, and they wouldn't for three more days.

I followed them, after I woke the next morning. They were good, clever in the way they picked their trail, but they didn't cover their tracks. They didn't expect anyone was following them. I found them by the end of that first day, bedded down in an abandoned barn just outside the next town. I knew the place, but had never thought to sleep there. I watched the, as they prepared, setting warnings and traps, posting lookouts and sleeping in shifts; I barely slept that first night. I was so engaged, so thrilled to see other people. Others like me.

It was clear from the start, they didn't belong anyway. They were outcasts, runaways or vagabonds - criminals, I learned later - wandering along the outskirts, keeping to the shadows, hiding when they needed to, but taking action when they felt bold enough. I don't remember why I was so fascinated by them, but thinking back, it may have been that I trusted them, in an odd, detached kind of way. They had something to lose, too, and were more than likely just as desperate and destitute as I was; in short, they weren't hunting me. It wasn't long before I began to think of them as potential allies.

They were skilled and tough, willing to do anything. I watched them as they stole from barns and storehouses where no one was around. I watched them as they held up shopkeepers and small time business owners for all the money they could carry, and met up with dubious contacts to pick up shipments that they smuggled to the next town. They didn't look like a frightening bunch - most weren't much older than me, in their early twenties - but they were effective. They hurt people, yes, but they needed to. So did I. I was horrified the first time they killed someone, after a delivery went awry and their partner failed them, but by the third or fourth time, I began to see the crooked justice in it. No one died who wasn't guilty of some cardinal sin of living off the grid. They were good, and I grew to like them.

One man among them stood out. He had short cropped, dusty blonde hair, and a good build, like a gymnast or a swimmer. He often wore his arms bare, threaded with practical muscle, gloves on his delicate, skillful hands, made of fine leather that looked wrong on his otherwise shabby person. His most defining feature, though, was his weapon of choice: a bow and arrow.

When they found me, when our paths finally crossed, he was the one who took me in. He kept me safe, and I was grateful for it. I still am, to this day.

It was a dreary afternoon that day, dark and overcast, and the air was wet all over, especially between the villages, in the trees where we stayed out of sight. I had begun to refer to the band and myself as we, though I wasn't a part of their group yet. I guessed at that time that they were aware of me, but since I obviously wasn't a threat, they paid me no mind. I stole from the places they raided, taking scraps they left behind, and sometimes I found little parcels left for me, hastily wrapped in ugly, patchwork packaging, but visible along the path they'd trod, the one I followed. It had been going on for almost two weeks, and so in a way, I did kind of belong with them, even if it wasn't yet official.

It was just outside a small village that they finally found me. I never learned its name. I never gave much thought about where I was back then. The Red Room felt like it wasn't on this planet, hidden away somewhere deep inside the moon, or on an asteroid, dark and abyssal, where no one could leave. In truth, I had only just made it beyond the city in my weeks of wandering, not more than a day or two's drive.

The village in question was old, with crooked streets perfect for an ambush. Had I not been so enamoured with this band of rogues, I would have been more careful, and paid closer attention to what they were doing, and where they were leading me; in retrospect, it was obviously a trap.

It was the archer who led me initially, keeping a suspicious watch over his shoulder as he parted marketplace crowds and stayed just far enough ahead of me to keep my mind working, keep my eyes on him, keep my pace frantic. When he disappeared, others took up his cause, and soon I was being led in ten different directions by every member of the gang. By the end, I was deep in their web, and though I realized belatedly - frustratedly - what they had done, it was far too late.

I turned, and found an arrow thrust in my face.

Guns are frightening enough, but to have an arrow pointed at your chest, the string tense, muscles in the arms of the archer straining for release, it is truly sobering. I backed down from the deadly potential of that weapon, and he quickly unslung the arrow and replaced it in his quiver when it was clear I had nowhere else to go. I raised my hands, and surrendered.

"Not bad for a kid," one of them said, in an ugly provincial accent. They all sauntered out after him, all of them thin and savage, dressed in patchwork rags; stolen leather jackets, ripped jeans, faded khakis, rough military boots, gloves, and scarves like gypsies. There were ten of them in all, nine of them men, and a single woman among them. It was clear from the start, she most of all wanted nothing to do with me. I learned later that she evidently feared that I - as a budding woman myself - would inevitably look upon her as a kind of mother figure, and she wanted nothing to do with that sort of responsibility. All the same, I hated her as much as she hated me. The rest were less cruel - "gut her for the dogs," were the woman's first words to me - but they were all rude in the beginning, shoving me and examining my own rags. All of them except the archer.

"Get off her," he spat, throwing one of the weaker men aside. The leader, a crooked hunter named Volkov, snarled at the archer, but did nothing in response. "She's good," Volkov said to the archer, "but not worth the time. She has nothing on her worth taking."

"We didn't bring her here to rob her," the archer said, as if I wasn't there. "We brought her here because I want to ask her some questions."

His Russian was strange, I remember even then. I couldn't place it, even with my well-trained ear. The girls in the Red Room were from all across the country, and I heard many accents from them, and from the teachers. His was difficult to place. I learned later that it was because he did not speak Russian natively. He was not Russian at all.

"You have five minutes, Barton," Volkov said. "If she has nothing, we leave her. If you don't catch up with us, we leave you."

"Your funeral," Barton said.

"Guns work just as well as bow and arrow."

"Only a man who couldn't fire either would say that," the archer said with a slim grin. He looked at me. His eyes were bright, and had a kindness in them, something I was unused to. It made me anxious, in a funny kind of way. "May I ask you some questions?" He asked gently.

I looked from him to Volkov, to the others, who were circling, but keeping their distance. "Sure," I said. "Fine."

The archer crossed his arms nonchalantly, and waited for the others to filter out of the alley, just out of earshot. "Hello," he said. "My name is Clint."

"Nat... Natalia," I replied. He crouched down, but he was not that much taller than me that he needed to. His face close to mine, I could see he was not much older than me, twenty five maybe, with a fine rim of stubble along his square chin. "Hello Natalia," he said. His voice had no ounce of threat in it, but his friendly demeanour seemed forced. "How long have you been following us?"

"Three days," I lied; it had been much longer.

"Why?" he said casually.

"I don't know."

"I don't think that's true."

"It helped me get food," I said.

"Aren't strangers dangerous?" he asked. I could sense the mocking tone lying under his words. "Where are your parents?"

"Don't know."

"I believe that," he said. He looked down at my wrist, and I tried feebly to hide it under my sleeve. I hadn't used them at all for weeks, and had nearly forgotten they were there. "What's that?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Fancy sort of nothing," he said.

"Why are you talking to me?" I spat. "Your friends wanted to rob me!"

"Can I let you in on a little secret, Nat?" he said, leaning closer. "They're not my friends."

"What are they?"

"You seem like a smart girl, Nat. So I'm gonna be honest with you. They're a means to an end. I need them, and they need me."

"So?"

"So, I was honest with you. You be honest with me. Right? That seems fair."

"I guess."

"So... What's the deal with those things on your wrist?"

"I stole them," I said, almost automatically. "I don't know what they do."

Clint tipped his head curiously, like a puppy hearing a foreign noise for the first time, but he nodded, and seemed satisfied. "Okay Nat," he said. "Your training is good. Really good, I'm actually impressed. But you're all alone, and the world is big. So I was thinking... Would you want to come with me and my guys? Just for a little while."

"If I do," I asked, "where will we go?"

"That depends," he said. "We go where there's money, or food. You understand that."

"Don't you want to go somewhere?" I asked.

"I don't know," Clint replied, raising an eyebrow. "Sounds like you do."

"I want to get out of Russia," I said quickly. I sized him up as he stood to his fullest again. He wasn't much bigger than me, but the gap in our age showed in his hardened body, built up from experience, hard work, and the struggle of learning the craft of his weapon. "Now why would you want to do that?" he asked. He was mocking me again, or something like it.

"I just do," I said defensively. "Everybody has secrets."

Clint laughed, and I didn't know why.

"Okay," he said, "you come with me, and I'll see if we can help you. But I may need your help first. That make sense?"

"I'm not a child," I said angrily. "But fine. I'll come. For a little while."

"You're a closed off girl, Nat," Clint chuckled. "Just stick with me, you'll be fine."

"I'll be fine. Either way."

"I'd be willing to bet you would," Clint said. "Don't worry. This will be a good partnership. I can feel it."

I walked with him back to the gang, and we disappeared from the village, never to see it again. For a while, Clint was true to his word. We wandered, we stole, we fought and shot and the gang members killed some people that crossed them. I was useful, for a time, and our path took us on a meandering tour through the area surrounding Moscow.

I didn't know it then, but we'd been going in as much a circle as I had been when I started out. We weren't heading away from the city, but back towards it, towards the Red Room itself. These men weren't agents of the program, far from it. But they had their own designs, and whispers of what went on in that room had reached even their ears, on some unknown channel, some hidden pathway. I was almost 19 when Clint finally asked me the question that had been burning in his mind since he first learned of my existence, since before that day when he looked down at my Widow's Bites, and knew what he saw.

"Okay Nat," he asked, "where is the Red Room?"


	5. Chapter 5: Winter

"Hold on, hold on..." It took Steve a few moments to process things sometimes, but Nat waited patiently. She wasn't sure if it was her nerves, her calm, or the third drink she'd finished, which she lay gently on the coffee table, trying to hide the little wobble in her arm. "You met Barton in Russia?" Steve said, finally finding his thought, and scrunching his brow in consternation.

"You sure you aren't gonna have any? You're making a girl feel guilty for drinking alone."

"I can't get drunk," Steve said. "It's a metabolism thing. Answer the question, Romanoff."

"Ugh, fine." Nat flicked the hair out of her eyes, and leaned back, one arm picking at the loose fluff at the back of the couch. Steve crossed his arms and leaned against the pillow opposite her. "Barton was in Russia, yeah. I didn't spend long with him, and we didn't become friends until... later."

"How much later?"

"Is it really important?"

"I want to know!" Steve said, surprisingly excitable. "I mean, I like Clint. He's a good man and a good soldier. But I know next to nothing about the guy. It feels like the first time I met him he was already shooting arrows at me. Then we flew into New York, there were aliens... I'm curious! That's all."

"It's part of the story. I'll get to it."

"Okay, okay. Sorry, I'll let you finish. How long were you out there? On your own?"

"Including the time with the gang? Over a year. It was a long time. I learned a lot, but I missed having... people around. I almost said comrades. Old Russian habit. But it's true, in a way. They weren't friends really, more like partners. Allies. But I missed that. Having something..."

"A team," Steve said, with a gentle smile.

"Right." Nat reached for the drink, but it was empty. "God, can you stop doing that?"

"What?"

"That face," Nat mimicked his expression, but as her speech was beginning to slur, she was sure it was a poor reproduction. "Like... like nothing I say or do can be bad, or wrong. Like you trust me. Like you..."

"I do trust you," Steve said. He leaned forward, and Nat found herself pressing her back against the pillow behind her. Why is my instinct always to run away? she thought. "If you want to stop, you can," Steve said. "I think I've heard more than enough to know what I'm getting into, and I think we're gonna be just fine."

"No, I..."

Nat looked around. The room was dark, the city beyond was sleepy and quiet. The faint smell of chilli had faded, and she could hear Sam snoring from the other room. Stars twinkled against the floor-to-ceiling windows... or city lights, she wasn't sure. Steve kept his eyes on her, protectively, almost, but turned away as she turned to meet his gaze. What was it with him? What was it with her? It wasn't attraction... Was it? I'd know, she thought, and so would he. I've been there before...

Steve got up suddenly, and stretched, straining the fabric of his shirt to its limit. "You want another drink?" he said. "We're not going anywhere. I'll have one too, if it'll make you feel better."

"I probably shouldn't but..." A voice in her head kept ringing, over and over, just go for it, Nat. She didn't trust that voice. She never had. "I guess you're right. We're not going anywhere, right?"

"Right," Steve responded, a wink of mockery in his voice, copying her tone. "We haven't been going anywhere for some time. Apparently Bucky really doesn't want to be found."

"Yeah..." This was the part Nat was dreading telling the most. "Um, Steve?"

He opened the fridge, and squinted as the dim light hurt his eyes in the dark. "Yeah? I'm guessing you don't want vodka. Why do we have this? Did Sam buy it? Why is it in the fridge..?"

"Steve, this next part... When we went back to the Red Room, I should have told you..."

"You are telling me. What's up?" He returned with two opened bottles of beer, and laid them both on the coffee table beside the couch.

"I told you... about Odessa. No more bikinis and everything."

"I think you said bye bye bikinis, but go on."

"Someone was paying attention," Nat smirked, then hiccuped awkwardly. "Anyway... That was the first time I encountered the Winter Soldier as a SHIELD agent. But... Not the first time we met."

"What?" Steve said. Nat was actually finding herself glad to be a little tipsy for this.

"I didn't know who he was then, or who he would become. And I obviously didn't know who he was, under the mask... He never took it off, I mean... Not really. Not... often."

"You were with him? He was there? In the Red Room?"

"Not exactly. It's... complicated. I'm sorry Steve, I didn't know. I couldn't know, and after everything... There was never a good time."

"Bucky..." Steve was at a loss for words; Nat was reminded of when he breathed Peggy's name earlier, with the same deeply felt reverence. This man was important to Steve, more than just a piece of his past. An integral piece, the lynchpin. "How long?" He asked.

"What?"

"How long has he been... that man? That agent? The Winter Soldier?"

"I gave you the files, didn't you..."

"How long, Natasha?"

"Steve..."

"You knew!" he said, raising his voice almost as if he didn't expect it. "You knew?"

"I didn't know this at the time, you have to believe me. It took me years to even connect the man who attacked me in Odessa to the man who I trained with... He was... part of my team, or I was part of his. He was young then, and he didn't look anything like what he does now, even with the mask on. But... from what I learned later, some of it as recently as a few weeks ago, they've been freezing and unfreezing him for decades. They only take him out for a mission at a time, then he went back in. It's what happened the first time, when we went back to the Red Room, with Clint..."

"He was there?"

"He was."

"And you fought with him? On his team? Nat, I can't believe..."

"No. Not on his team. Not the first time..."

"What do you mean?"

"The first time we met, we weren't allies... We were enemies."

I liked Clint. He was kind, and lighthearted, and he made me laugh when I thought I couldn't laugh at all anymore. The others were not so nice, but they left me alone, or else they respected what I could do enough to keep their distance. They were a skilled bunch, but few had had the kind of rigorous training that I had. Only Clint seemed to be able to keep up with me, match my stamina, outpace me; he even found a few things to teach me. I was a good shot with a pistol when I met them, and I'd begun to learn how to handle a sniper at long range, but Clint could hit anything, anywhere, with any projectile. The bow and arrow were his favourite, but he could use it all. He had an almost supernatural sense of direction, of where his target was and how he could get to it. I could never get the bow... It was too big, and I wasn't strong enough, and even Clint said it would take too much time to teach me, time we didn't have. But he showed me how to hold a gun ever so slightly tighter, or how to adjust for wind resistance when firing at extreme distances. Within a few weeks, I was already seeing improvement. After training with Clint - 'Hawkeye' as the gang called him - I was unstoppable.

Clint was not the gang's leader - that was Volkov, the rough one with a weasel's face - but they followed him as if he were. He never gave orders, except during the heat of battle, when he had to jump in and save one of them from certain death. Apart from that, Clint led them through misdirection, always adjusting their course slightly on sound advice; there's a military outpost not far from that village, let's go around; there's a river down there, and we won't have time to dry before it gets cold; we can't go that way, that's Chechen territory. None of them ever doubted him, none of them had any reason to. They trusted his advice, and never questioned it, and through sly manipulation, Clint kept us on a course of his choosing. I seemed to be the only one who noticed, and so I was the only one who thought to ask.

This was before I knew where we were headed. Before he asked me about the Red Room.

"I'm just trying to be sensible," he shrugged, tousling his cropped hair. We were taking refuge in an abandoned barn; I began to suspect that most of the places we came across were not abandoned voluntarily. Clint and I were in the hayloft. He liked to keep near me when we bedded down for the night, uncertain of the motives and intentions of his fellows. I didn't have anything to worry from them, and the first time Clint defended me openly, I let him know it. But in his own sly way, he protected me, and tried to make sure I never saw it happening. I had laid my blanket over some hay, and was lying back, my feet up on a taller bale, Clint standing nearby, looking out the little rectangular window onto the field, the setting sun. "We avoid any trouble we can, and it makes us that much more ready for the trouble we can't avoid," he continued. "It's simple."

"I don't think that's all it is," I responded. Clint looked at me in that funny way of his, a smile on his lips, his brow creased, as if he was waiting to ask a question. "No?" he said. "What am I up to, then?"

"I don't know." I stretched, and my toes curled against the inside of my new, steel-toed boots. "But it's something."

"I knew you were smart, Nat," he smirked.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" I said. "My name is Natalia."

"You said Nat," he said. "First time I asked you, you said Nat."

"I said Natalia."

"You said Nat first," Clint smirked, like he'd caught me in a lie, like he'd beaten me in some logical puzzle. "So it's Nat."

"Fine," I said. "Call me what you want."

"I will," he said. "I am."

"What kind of name is Clint, anyway? It doesn't sound Russian."

"It's because it's not. I wasn't born in Russia."

I had not expected such a bold admission. That explained a lot, but it did not explain why he was travelling with a band of Russian criminals. "Where... were you born?"

"Somewhere else," he said, and he winked at me as he began to mend one of his arrowheads. I liked when he winked at me, but I could never tell why. "You don't wanna tell me?" I prodded.

"No," he said, looking out the window; soft, fuzzy orange light caught the edge of his chin, the thin line of stubble, and made his eyes glow like a bird's. "That a problem?"

"I guess not," I replied. "It explains the accent."

"You caught onto that, huh?"

"You really thought I wouldn't notice?" I raised an eyebrow, and Clint chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "I guess you're right. It is pretty obvious."

"What language do you speak?"

"I speak Russian," he said glibly.

"And?" I asked.

"It's not important," Clint said, shaking his head. He was becoming evasive now, and a nervous tick he had, where he scratched just above his right eyebrow, was beginning to surface more and more frequently. "You're keeping a lot secret for someone who wants me to trust him," I said.

"But you do, right?" He turned to face me, and the light split his face down the middle, one side glowing, the other side in shadow. I liked the hard edges of his face. I wanted to trace them with the tip of my finger. "What?" I asked.

"You trust me? Nat?"

"I guess," I said, sitting up. "Why?"

"Because you said you wanna get out of here, and I can't get you out if you don't trust me."

"Then I guess I have no choice," I said, lowing my voice. The others were below, milling about, smoking, drinking, but very much awake, and capable of hearing our conversation. I sat up a bit more, propping my back against the hay, which shifted at the slightest touch, making my position uneasy. Clint kneeled down next to me, and looked me in the eye. "You do have a choice, Nat," he said. "I want you to believe that. You always have a choice. To do what feels right, to you. To not follow orders. To be free."

"What are you saying?" I asked, leaning closer to him. "Clint, what's going on?"

"I have to ask you something, Nat. Something important. I wanted to wait, but now is as good a time as any, and you're right, we can't keep doing this. You have secrets, I have secrets. They serve their purpose for a time, but eventually they have to come out, or people might get hurt."

"So ask me," I said, and it was the closest I ever remember being to him.

"Okay Nat," he said, "where is the Red Room?"

And all at once, that moment turned, and it was the furthest I ever remember being from him. My blood ran cold, and a shiver ran up my spine that wouldn't stop for anything. My fingers began to prickle, and I'm sure my jaw dropped a little, despite my training, my instinct not to show anything. "What?" I barely managed to get the words out. My throat was dry.

"I know you know about it," he said. "Those things on your wrist? Your training? You escaped. No one escapes from there, Nat, and I need your help."

"Why?" I gasped. My eyes stung with fresh tears. "You said... You said we were leaving."

"After," he said, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. "But there's something I have to do. I'll keep you safe, I promise. But I need to know where it is."

"I don't need your protection," I said, swatting his hand away and pushing past him so I could stand. His closeness was suffocating now, and I was finding it hard to breathe as it was, with the tears coming fresh to my eyes. I never wanted to see that place again, and now the one person I thought I could rely on was asking me to take him there. Why?

"There's nothing there, I promise," I told him, trying to keep my voice level. "Don't make me..."

"There are other people there, Nat," Clint said, keeping his voice level, and keeping crouched, staying below me; a power play, letting me feel like I was in control. "Other students. Others, like you. We can save them. We can get them out."

"Why the hell do you care?!" I shouted.

There was a rustle of motion from below. "What's going on up there?" One of them called up. I tried to calm myself, breathing like they taught me in the program, then hating myself for using their tactics, their skills, the things they installed in me.

Clint was sitting now, his legs crossed, his hands folded over his ankles, like a child. "It's important to me, Nat," he said delicately, his own words losing some of their force as emotions hiding behind his eyes took hold. "It's... You may not understand it now, and I'm sorry I can't say more, but I need to do it."

"I won't go back there," I replied. "If you want to find it, find it yourself."

"How?" he asked. "How else will I ever find it without you?"

"I don't care," I spat. "I don't even know where it is. I ran away."

"I think you do," he said. "Deep down, I think you do know. You may not know it consciously, but somewhere inside..."

"Fuck you, Clint," I said. There was rage inside me, burning in my gut, and a deep sadness, drowning me. They fought for control, churning and burning and twisting inside me, like a hurricane with nowhere to go. It was eating me, and I began to sob, furious tears streaking my face. "Nat..." he said, leaning closer towards me. I wanted to run, but my muscles had frozen. "Nat, please."

"Just tell me why," I sobbed, keeping my voice low. Clint got to his feet, and put a hand on my shoulder again. I grimaced, but I couldn't throw him off. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked.

"What do you think I've been doing?!" I grumbled. "Idiot..."

"Nat... I'm - "

"What's going on up there, bro?!"

It was Volkov, shouting from below. Evidently, someone had gone to fetch him when they heard me shouting, and he was now loudly ascending the ladder to the hayloft, followed by two of his most loyal comrades. "Barton?" he sneered, looking at Clint before acknowledging me, giving me a chance to wipe away some of the tears. Clint crossed his arms, and matched Volkov's gaze. "Nothing," he said. "It's nothing."

"You a bad liar, bro," Volkov said. "Natalia! Hey! Turn and face me when I speak to you."

I did as I was told, but only so I could avoid whatever punishment Volkov might concoct if I disobeyed. My eyes were dry, but they were still red; Volkov didn't seem to notice. "This is no good," Volkov said, kissing his teeth as he began to pace. I noticed his two fellows were armed, and Clint had made a few subtle steps towards his bow. Volkov continued unimpeded.

"Natalia, Natalia, Natalia... You share our food, our drink, our clothes, our money, our space. You breathe our air, Natalia. You live because we let you live, and yet you keep secrets from us?" He tsked again, and waggled his finger patronizingly at me. "Not good, bro," he said.

"What do you want from me?"

"What do I want?" he sneered. "No no no, what do I deserve, Natalia. You are a part of this outfit, now. You want to belong? It's time you start pulling your weight."

"Volkov," Clint said. "Not now. Another time."

"No, Barton!" Volkov thrust his finger at Clint, threatening him. "Now. We do this now. Because I am tired of waiting, and I am tired of seeing no reason for this little child to be with us. What does she offer?" He turned on me. "What do you offer, eh?"

"I can shoot," I said defensively. "I can fight. Every time you've sent me to steal something, I've never been caught. Not once."

"Yes, yes, yes," Volkov hissed. "But this is true of most of us. What else do you bring to this gang? What else keeps me from sending you back out into the woods, you little stray?"

"She's not going anywhere," Clint said. I didn't want his help, but I was glad of it. Maybe if they kicked me out, he'd come too. Maybe.

"Shut up, Barton," Volkov snarled, "or you can go too."

"You'd be lost without me," Clint said. He seemed casual, but I knew he was as tense as me. Whatever peace he'd made with these gangsters, it was tenuous at best. But he needed them. I needed them, even if neither of us wanted to admit it. I had to think fast. "Talk back to me again, Barton," Volkov said, stalking towards him. It was a challenge, a dare. "I'll make you wish we never met."

"I already do," Clint shrugged. "The smell is the worst part." I expected Volkov to respond, to throw some empty threat back in Clint's face, but instead he appeared calm."Bro," he said slowly. "Brobrobrobrobro."

Then suddenly, he snapped around, much more quickly than I ever would have guessed he was capable of, and cocked his fist back before punching Clint across the face. Clint dropped, and hit the ground hard. Volkov loomed over him, his teeth bared, like a hungry predator. "Still a funny man, Barton? Still a funny man down there? Eh, bro? Where is your bow now, bro? Where?!"

Volkov kicked Clint. Get up, I kept shouting in my head. Get up! Fight! When Volkov kicked again, I raised my fists, and the Widow's Bites came to life on my arms. Volkov turned, a jealous glare in his eyes. "You wanna know how I help? You wanna know what I've got?" I said, fists still raised. "I have these!"

"Yes," Volkov hissed, turning his attention back to me. His eyes looked hungry. "But what do they do, little stray? You never show me, even though I ask so nicely." He splayed his hands, and he looked like some perverted country priest.

"I'll show you," I said, but neither of us moved. The Bites crackled in the empty barn, and I could feel my fists getting hot. "You won't like it."

"I think I will," Volkov grinned wickedly. "I think I want some of those for myself. Where did you get them? Where did a little baby girl get weapons like those?"

"I told you," I said. "I stole them."

"From where?" Volkov snarled.

"I'll... I'll show you," I said, flashing a glance at Clint. "I'll take you there. It's... We have to go near the city."

"Moscow? Brobrobro..." he said slowly. "It's been a while since I've been back. Won't it be good to see it again, boys?" He turned to his men, and they nodded, but they looked uncomfortable. "Eh Barton?" he snarled.

"If you say so," he said. Clint got to his feet, his arm wrapped around his gut where Volkov's steel-toed boots had fallen. Volkov looked down on Clint, then back to me. "We go in the morning," he said. "I hear anything else from up here - anything - you wake me up? You're gone. I won't just leave you." He drew his hand across his throat, but the gesture was so melodramatic, it almost looked like parody. Clint and I both stayed silent. "You get me?" he snarled.

Clint shrugged, and I nodded and powered the Bites down. Volkov chuckled, and descended the ladder with his compatriots. "Sleep tight, bro," he said from below, and it was the last we heard from him. As soon as he was gone, Clint turned to me. His eyes were full of pain, but he'd apparently forgotten about the beating he took. "Nat..." he said. His pain was for me. I felt bad.

"If I do this... You'll get me out of Russia?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Yes. I swear."

"Then it's done. I'll take you. But I'm not going inside."

"Let's hope we don't need to," he said. His nose was bleeding from where Volkov had punched him, and I rifled in the little bag they'd given me for a bandage. I plastered the little white, rectangular strip across his face, and he winced a little, squinting one eye. "I'm supposed to be protecting you," he said.

"Are you?" I smirked a little. "You're doing a pretty shit job."

He laughed quietly, then winced again as his stomach contracted, and the muscles ached. "Let's get some sleep," he said.

"Just keep to your side of the barn," I said, and found my little makeshift bed. Secretly, somewhere deep inside me, I didn't want him to. I wanted his arms around me, his body close to me, but I could never say so. We were friends, at least... I thought we were. At the thought of seeing the Red Room again, all I wanted was someone, anyone. Yelena...

I closed my eyes, and passed out almost instantly.

We moved camp the next morning. No one spoke. The dawn was cold, and it woke us all just before sunset, and from then on, Volkov's mood kept everyone silent.

There were eleven of us in all, including me and Clint. Volkov walked at the front of our lazy column, flanked by the same two cronies who had followed him the night before; Yuri and Dominick, the dullest of the clan. Ilya was the scout of the group, a bright, light-haired boy not much older than me, always flitting ahead to report on what was to come. On either side of Clint and I were Nikita, a stoic, bearded man, and a man everyone called Rat; I never learned his real name. The woman, Katja, brought up the rear, a heavy shotgun in her slight arms, and somewhere out in the distance was a man named Boris, who'd commandeered a motorcycle from a barn a few days back, and drove it on the road nearby, ostensibly keeping watch, but we were all waiting for the inevitable day he would leave us, and never return.

It was a bad day to travel, but Volkov insisted. I could see my breath in the air, and my bones were aching. The cold was dampening our mood even further, and worse, we were all succumbing to the cold, and it was impossible to stay positive. It would only be a matter of time before someone snapped.

It was Katja, mercifully, who demanded we stop and camp for the night. We were still a day's march from the city, but we were near a secluded copse of trees which might keep out the wind, and we were all too tired to keep going. Volkov didn't protest, and it was then that we knew he'd been beaten by the elements, too. We set up camp as best we could on the rocks inside the grove, and shivered by a dying fire until it grew too dark to see.

I crept to Clint's side, and whispered, even though half of the others were already sound asleep.

"We should go. Now," I said. "While we can."

"We'll freeze."

"We'll manage. Don't be a baby. This is Russia."

"I still need to know where it is, Nat," he said. "I still have to find it. It's important."

"I'll take you," I replied, growing frantic; could he really deny me what I asked for? "Or I'll show you on a map or something. If I can find it... I can't stay here, Clint. I can't."

"It's out of my hands, Nat. I'd tell you more, but it would only put you in more danger if we were separated. You said you trusted me."

"What are you hiding, Clint?"

"Nat, it's - "

A sound from beyond the light of the fire silenced us. We both looked frantically into the impenetrable darkness, and several of the others rose from sleep to see what had made the noise. "Is it Boris?" I asked. "Is he back?"

"It doesn't sound like Boris," Clint said, gently rising to his feet, picking up his bow and a pair of arrows. "Douse the fire," he said.

"We won't be able to see," I protested.

"I know. Neither will they."

I did as I was told, and found my pistol by my bedroll. Clint had given it to me, and I always kept it close. There was another rustle, more faint this time, but closer. "Clint..." I breathed, but he silenced me with a wave of his hand. The others had gotten out of their makeshift beds, and I spotted Volkov with his Vityaz - a standard issue submachine gun - at the ready. It was then that I knew: we were being attacked.

A shot cut through the night like cannon fire, rippling as it tore through the darkness, and Volkov went down in a splatter of blood. Everyone turned in the direction of the shot, Ilya screamed and Nikita cursed, but by then, the rattle of guns had picked up from behind where the original shot had been fired. The darkness was soon dotted with orange muzzle flashes like burning stars in the night, and we hastily attempted to return fire at enemies we couldn't see, scrambling for cover and shouting and cursing aimlessly. One thing was clear: our attackers were trained, co-ordinated, and well-equipped. This was no accident. We were their target.

I ducked for cover as the gunfire increased, and as Ilya and Dominick went down riddled with holes, their bodies spewing misty bursts of red. I returned fire tentatively, but with no idea of where our enemies were without the assistance of their deadly muzzle flares, I was shooting blind. Clint had taken a higher position, but he wasn't shooting. He was waiting.

The rifle cracked again, and Katja went down with a final wail. My heart stopped momentarily, and I went cold, colder than I already was, before I came back to life. Their fire was increasing, and ours was only dwindling. I had doused our campfire, but as they increased their attack, new fires began to blaze. Soon, we would be trapped. I needed to go. At once.

But not without Clint.

"Barton!" I shouted. He didn't turn. His eagle eyes were scanning the darkness, looking for the sniper. I hadn't heard his rifle crack for a few moments, but he was still there, probably changing position. "Clint, come on! We're beaten. We need to go."

"Wait..."

"Clint, come on!"

The stone I was taking cover behind shattered, and I slipped back into cover, unsure if I'd even been hit. I turned to look, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of who it was that was attacking us. I shot as fast as I could. I emptied the clip. The man was taken by surprise, and the bullets caught him square in the chest, two, three, four times. He fell, dead. He fell, and I made sure to shoot him again.

I recognized the uniform. The Red Room had found us.

"Clint, God dammit! We gotta go now!"

He turned, and saw the downed man. "The sniper..."

"Now!" I barked. Clint shouldered his bow, and slung the arrows back into the quiver. "The fire is gonna trap us," I said. "We need to go. Out, away from them. We'll make it if we hurry while they take the rest of the gang down."

"Nat..."

"Now, dammit! I'm not dying here."

The rifle shattered the dark air again, and Clint flinched. "Alright, we're outta here."

"Thank you." I reloaded my pistol, and we took off over the rocks, into the dark and away from the flames. Gunshots kept firing, and we tried to put them behind us. "Faster Clint," I said, outstripping him as the adrenaline took over me. "Let's move, we gotta go!"

"I'm coming," he huffed. "Where are we going?"

We put more distance between us, and I hoped we were out of sight. It took Clint a moment to catch up to me, and I knew what I had to do. "We aren't," I said, "going. Anywhere. You are."

"Nat... Nat, no."

"Clint, I know who they are. I saw them. The uniforms. They're from the Red Room."

"Nat, if they are from the Red Room, we need to go. Both of us."

"They won't kill me," I said. I could feel them getting closer; the gunshots had concluded with a final burst of the rifle. "But you, Clint..."

"Nat, you... I said I would..."

"We... It's fine, Clint. I'll... I'll think of something."

"I won't let them take you."

"Let them take me," I said, "but come get me out."

"I promise."

"Good." I raised my gun at him. "Now go."

"Don't let them break you, Nat," he said, turning away. "You can't be broken."

"Go."

He turned, and ran, and disappeared into the night.

They were on me before long. There were a dozen of them, and aside from a few small wounds, they looked almost entirely unhurt. Their leader was a dour man with a sour face, tucked in and pinched at his little mouth. His head was almost bald, but a wisping of white hair lingered there, stubbornly. His eyes were icy, and had seen death. "So they were right," he said smugly. "I thought it too bold a plan. But here you are. Can it really be her?"

One of the others, masked, came up to inspect me. I slapped their hands away at first, but after several swift strikes across my face for resisting, I let them check what they needed to. The masked man seemed to recognize me, and nodded to his superior. "Good. That little show of resistance alone should be enough to tell me. That indomitable attitude. You're quite famous in the Red Room, you know."

"Go to hell."

"I'll take you there with me, or worse," he said. "Your little clan is dead. But you ran? We taught you well. How many of you were there?"

"Ten," I said boldly, "including me."

"How many dead did we count?"

"About nine," one of the cohorts said.

"Go and check. How many did the big gun get?"

"Four," a voice said from the dark. A well-muscled man materialized from the dark. He had long hair, and wore a mask over his mouth and nose. Goggles glinted like cat's eyes in the dark, and he wore dark body armour that shone in the dim moonlight. "And I counted. Nine dead." He held a Barrett M82A1M in his arm, a heavy .50 calibre rifle. The thing was a killing machine, used for enemies in entrenched positions. The gun was big, heavy sheet steel, used for anti-materiel assault, yet he carried it like it was nothing. Soon, I saw why.

His right arm wasn't real, it was metal. I thought at first that it was some kind of armour, but the way it moved, the way pieces slid out of place and back in, I knew it was beyond my knowledge, some kind of advanced, neuro-mechanical, bio-robotics. With his face covered as it was, he didn't look human, some kind of monster crept from some deep, soviet shadow. Some kind of machine. "They're dead," he said.

"Good," the leader replied. "We have our prize. We'll bring her back to the Red Room. At least the KGB will be happy. You're worth a fortune." He nodded at the masked soldier, who remained stoic, frozen, looking at me.

"We can't stay out here," one of the soldier said. "We'll freeze."

"You can take the men back," the leader said. "Will she freeze?"

"We can set up a camp, but the men won't stay. We're not equipped to stay overnight."

"Neither am I," the leader said. "Will the girl freeze?"

"No," another soldier replied. "She's hardy."

"A camp will keep them safe. We can use some of our supplies."

"Leave her with him," the leader said. "He's used to being frozen."

The masked soldier grunted, and stalked over to me. He took me by the arm with his metal hand, and twisted, dragging me forward. I was glad Clint got away. I did not know what fate awaited me, but I knew it would be hell.

The Red Room had found me, and they had left me in the company of the KGB's most dangerous soldier. I wasn't even sure I'd survive the night.


End file.
